Chapter 2

I made it to the bathroom at 4:52.

I don’t remember deciding to run. I remember the lockbox against my chest, the phone clutched in my right hand, Priss’s voice behind me like a nail scraping wood. Dean shouted my name once. I hit the bathroom door, slammed it, and turned the old brass lock.

The storm rattled the window. The mirror over the sink showed my face: freckles, hazel eyes gone wide, a red scrape along my right cheek. My ponytail had come loose. I looked like someone who had been running from something for years and had only just noticed.

Dean pounded on the door.

“Nessa, open up.”

I sat on the closed toilet lid and opened the voice memo. The file was forty-one seconds long so far. My thumb hovered over the play button, but I couldn’t listen. Not yet. If Dean’s voice was at the beginning, I wasn’t ready.

I dragged the clip marker to 4:42, when Priss had me on the floor. Fifteen seconds. Enough.

Priss’s voice came out of the tiny speaker, tinny and cruel. “You think Dean will save you? He knows what’s best for this farm. By six fifteen, Mama signs, and you’re out.”

The needle was not visible in audio, but I could hear my own breath, sharp and fast. I could hear the lockbox scrape concrete. I could hear Priss say, “Let go of the box.”

I sent it to Yolanda, the hospice nurse who had been assigned to Alma since spring. Then I typed: Priss attacked me. Syringe. Acepromazine. Lockbox safe. Need help. Notary at 6:15.

Dean pounded again. “Nessa. You don’t understand what’s happening.”

“I understand enough,” I said.

My phone buzzed. Yolanda: Are you safe?

Me: Bathroom. Locked. Alma sedated.

Yolanda: I’m calling sheriff. Keep that phone. Keep the box. I’m coming if I can get through.

Dean’s voice dropped. “Don’t play the beginning.”

I stared at the door.

“What?” I said.

“The recording,” he said. “Don’t play the beginning. It’s not what you think.”

My stomach turned to ice. He knew there was a recording. Not just a phone. A recording. Priss must have told him through the door, or he had guessed from the way Priss looked at my hand. But how did he know about the beginning?

I looked down at the file. The timer said 4:31. The first seconds of Dean’s voice were in there. I had heard him outside, low and muffled, but I hadn’t listened closely. I had been too busy trying to get Alma’s pills away from Priss.

Now I wanted to know.

But Dean was still pounding, and Priss was somewhere in the house with Alma, and Emmie was upstairs. My daughter. Ten years old. She had probably heard the door slam, the shouting. She had probably gone to the top of the stairs.

I typed to Yolanda: Priss has POA. Dean with her. Notary at 6:15.

Yolanda: Do not let them take Alma. Stall. I have the clip.

I closed my eyes. The bathroom smelled like lavender soap and old pipes. Outside, a branch cracked against the house. I wanted to cry, but crying would not keep Alma alive. It would not keep Emmie safe. It would not make Dean’s first question disappear from my head.

Where’s your phone?

Not Are you hurt? Not What happened? Not Why is your cheek bleeding?

Where’s your phone?

I opened the voice memo again. I didn’t play it. I just looked at the waveform. Forty-one seconds of proof. Maybe more now. I pressed record again, because if Dean and Priss were going to talk outside the bathroom, I wanted every word.

“Nessa,” Dean said through the door, softer now. “Open up. We can fix this. You’re scaring Emmie.”

That was the first thing he had said that sounded like him. The Dean who fixed fence posts and carried Alma to the bath when she couldn’t stand. The Dean who had held my hand at her diagnosis and promised we would not put her in a home.

But he had not asked if I was hurt.

The recording bar moved.

“Don’t play the beginning,” he said again.

I didn’t answer.